


Permutations

by toban



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood and Violence, Character Death, Conundrums of Philosophy, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Implied Relationships, Intense, M/M, Mental Anguish, helmet party, no respawn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 00:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20106208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toban/pseuds/toban
Summary: The respawn is down, and dangling in its place is not only the promise of death, but also a rumoured one-way ticket out of this endless war. With the other mercenaries all fighting to be the last man standing, only Soldier hangs back — trapped by his fears of how this final battle will possibly play out, and of leaving behind the one person he has grown to trust his innermost emotions with.Because it doesn't matter even if there are infinite realities out there branching out from this moment. So long as Dell is alive in this one.





	Permutations

  


[1]

  


They all knew it would happen one day. It should never have been an option for them in the first place, this infernal device. It had conditioned them to the atrocities of war, numbed them to the finality of death, tricked them into taking for granted everything that gave meaning to the ennui of their seemingly eternal life. 

Friendship was what kept them going, forged on those bizarre, shared experiences that nobody outside this war would understand. And the deeper bonds that emerged from some of those friendships, rare and fragile as they were, kept their hearts soaring and very much alive even in times of bloodshed, broken limbs and battered spirits. 

But their losses would be permanent this time. Now their every move would bear consequence, every drop of blood spilled bring them closer to the void—a void that definitely did not take the shape of an innocent-looking respawn chamber. 

* * *

  


[2]

  


He was prepared to die for this war just like all the ones he had fought before. Over and over again. Ad infinitum. 

He could not even remember what was so different about all of them, except the ones that ended with his most incredulous deaths. Flung to the enemy’s base after stepping on a sticky—right onto a waiting skyward sword. Clinging on to the lip of a bottomless pit by the barest of fingertips, only to slip after a jar of piss shattered unceremoniously over his head. And the one where he died under his own rocket, _thrice_ reflected. That was probably his most memorable so far. 

So many ways to end a life, and none ending in death. Like a morbid bucket-list lottery where he had to check off every possible way he could die, until the one that would strike him off for good. 

But what did it matter now? He had drafted himself into this contract knowing full well this would be how it ended, and he sure as hell had come to terms with that. Or so he thought. 

It felt different this time round, too different. Not because he knew there was no reset button to the battle they were now facing, nor because all of a sudden he could not even come up with a single, feasible plan that would keep himself and as many of his teammates alive as possible. The gravity of this wretched game lay not at the frontlines, but where he had—for better or for worse—chosen to leave his innermost fears and emotions. 

* * *

  


[3]

  


_“Now fight to the death.”_

The Administrator’s cackling voice did not ring out from over the speakers today. Yet all of them heard it in their heads loud and clear, a tape fed by panic and running on repeat against their will. 

Rumour had it that the respawn mechanism was in fact switched off on purpose, either for Mann Co. to cut their losses after these redundant gravel wars, or for the open secret that was the Administrator’s depraved self-gratification. That same rumour even went on to insinuate that the last ones standing by the end of the day would be free to forfeit their contracts. 

A true battle royal, with liberty as the prize and betrayal as the price. Little surprise then that the scrimmage just a few yards away was this intense, this savage. 

For a long time he stayed crouched behind a doorway next to Tavish, who had his pipe launcher in a death grip as he cursed and muttered feverishly to himself. The doorway led to the centre of their arena, alive in a cacophony of rattling guns and detonations, and punctuated with one strangled cry after another. He recognised that last one—_Jeremy, that poor boy, Godspeed to him_—and tightened his hands around his trusty rocket launcher. 

Beside him, Tavish give a shaky laugh each time those dying screams rang out. “Who’d know it’d ever come to this, eh?” he mumbled, his crazed grin giving way to a grimace as he leaned back and stared blankly at the roof above. Cinders drifted over them like snowflakes from hell as a flare struck one of the planks just then: the enemy Pyro was sussing them out. 

“Y’know, lad, I promised me mum I’ll leave this war with nothin’ more than _both_ me eyes gone. Still got tae show her I dunnae need another job fer both of us, after this bloody contract’s all done...” 

Tavish trailed off, but he wasn’t listening. He was supposed to be out there fighting, but here he was, holding back. Wavering. Delaying his death at the expense of his friends’. All because he worried for _him_. 

At Tavish’s fourth laugh he stood up—the growing knot in his stomach was too hard to ignore now—and hoisted his launcher before rushing back where he came from. From behind him he suddenly heard the popping of pipe bombs—then Tavish’s war cry and bounding footsteps receding, as though the two of them had spurred each other into action. Albeit for different reasons. 

He hoped as hell he would never hear Tavish scream the way Jeremy did. 

* * *

  


[4]

  


The unease only stopped gnawing at him when he rounded the corner of a shed halfway through the grounds, and ran smack into the familiar frame of a dispenser. It was almost hot to the touch as it furiously healed its maker—who was a few feet away, kneeling beside his sentry and busy fixing its barrels, even with blood streaking his sleeves and running down his arms and wrench in rivulets. A deep gash sliced right across his back, soaking his shirt and overalls in a glistening dark red. 

At the sound of the dispenser’s metallic clunk he whirled around on his knee and froze, staring. 

“Dell, what—” 

_“The hell are you doin’ here?”_ Dell broke out from his spell and stood up, yanking his goggles down to his neck as he strode towards him. His eyes were flashing: livid, and uncharacteristically so. “Aren’t you supposed to be up front killin’ them before they get to us?” 

“For God’s sake, Dell! _What_ happened to you?” 

Dell clenched his fist more tightly around his wrench, then eased. “S’nothing, jus’ a scuffle,” he muttered, turning away and waving dismissively at a nearby heap on the ground: on closer look it was a masked man in a suit, his neck bent at a queasy angle. “Coward put up a darned good fight, but I managed to whack his brains out an’—” 

He caught himself before going on further, and looked up into those eyes still trained on him from under the rim of their helmet. 

“Listen, Sol,” he started, seething through his teeth as he slammed his wrench onto the dispenser and pointed towards their base. “I saw what happened to Mundy in his nest. _He’s_ a goner now. God knows who else is, but at this rate there sure won’t be enough of us left to take ’em all down. You gotta—” 

“Negatory.” Even as he snapped that word he did not sound entirely convinced of himself. Yet. “Look, those sons-of-bitches will all be after you and Doc now that the respawn’s good as dead. And by God I’ll be damned if they don’t try to take you and your dispenser down first with an Über or Kritz! I will not risk that happening to y—” 

His fingers suddenly tightened a notch around his rocket launcher. If not for its handle he figured he’d have drawn blood from clenching his fist that hard. 

“You... you need someone to watch your back, Engie,” he went on stiffly, lowering the launcher. “To hold this fort in case Doc goes down.” 

“So all the more you _shouldn’t_ be all the way back here.” 

Dell looked away again and started cursing under his breath. Another first—those words were usually reserved for the other team’s Spies. “Christ, Sol... I told you I’ve got this. Pyro’s already checked on us all jus’ now, an’ Tavish said he’d too.” 

“You know that is nowhere near enough!” he snapped. It took all his willpower to stop himself from grabbing Dell by the arms and shaking some sense into him. “I know you have done this a billion times before. _All_ of us have. But we have no second chances this time, and you bloody well know that you and Doc are the most important fighters on our team. If we cannot keep you both alive then we will defend at least _one_ of you whatever it takes!” 

“An’ you say that as if you ain’t equally indispensable!” 

From under the rim of his helmet he could see Dell’s glare turned back towards him, mixed with frustration and a fleeting fear across his eyes as his breaths threatened to catch in his throat. A fear he recognised in himself many months ago, just before he decided to wing it and risk losing this friendship once and for all. 

Dell leaned up close and jabbed a finger hard at him. It felt tight against his chest, relentless as their imminent deaths closing in on them. 

“Sol,” he said in a harsh whisper. “You’ll trust me here the way I trust you can take down those bastards up at the front.” The fear in his eyes had now given way to an oddly steely gaze that refused to shy away. “Now get out there an’ _give ’em hell._” 

“But—” 

Without warning Dell grabbed him hard by the collar and yanked. Their helmets met with a crack as Dell’s face drew right up against his own—then his lips too as a fierce, almost helpless urgency surged through their every brush of skin against stubble. Dell tasted of coffee and cider, of gunpowder and gravel dust, of malt and machine fumes and mellow chords strumming into the desert—all enveloped in that warmth and surprising tenderness he had grown to love and look forward to, with the dying light of every evening that signalled ceasefire since that fateful gamble he had won. 

In the space of those few precious seconds he caught the glimpse of one possibility among infinite others that was his present, that could be _their_ future. A future familiar, constant—yet impossibly far away all at once. 

* * *

  


[0]

  


He was back to that star-speckled night in the heart of the badlands, where they lay awake from too much coffee, too little beer and a severe lack of blankets from the cold of fall. 

They had been ill-prepared for this getaway: it was their first ceasefire in an entire month, and they had up and left for some peace and quiet after a quick shower, armed with only his shotgun and Dell’s guitar. Only when Dell’s truck came to a stop an hour and miles later did they realise they had nothing to sustain themselves through the night but a smattering of rations, an obscene number of coffee powder sacks—Mundy had asked for some temporary storage space since his own van was too full of “self-contained weapons”, as he so delicately put it—and a lone faded parka. 

Not that he really minded there was only one parka to share between him and Dell. 

One rather crappy supper later, they were leaning against the rest of the coffee sacks in the truck bed, with the parka stuffed behind their backs and the guitar propped over Dell’s knees. Midway through a half-hearted strum Dell started rambling—perhaps inspired by the quiet vastness above them—about an idea he’d come across during his studies years ago. Something bigger than he himself could imagine, about the reality of their visible world. The infinite threads and outcomes from this sphere of existence, playing out in infinite variations in other simultaneous universes. 

“A multiverse,” he repeated. The word swirled its way around his mouth with the aftertaste of coffee, thick as the cloud of question marks coalescing inside his mind. 

Dell nodded enthusiastically beside him, plucking a few last chords before placing the guitar aside, and leaned his head further back into the sacks. Above, the stars glittered like an obliging illustration to Dell’s musings as he went on. 

“Jus’ imagine, Jane. All of this—space, time, matter, light, this sky, this truck, _us_ right ’ere—” he felt Dell nudge an elbow into the side of his arm—“existin’ in other dimensions jus’ like this one, an’ we’re all none the wiser.” 

He deliberated for a while, struggling to come up with something that didn’t sound stupid in front of Dell. 

“... Well then, how the hell would anyone know if those other dimensions were even there in the first place?” 

Dell chuckled. “See, that’s the beauty of it: _nobody_ knows if it’s all true or jus’ speculative garbage. But it kind of gets you thinkin’, don’t it...” His voice fell a shade quieter. “Makes you wonder how different those billions of other yous in those alternate universes are from this. What sorta life choices did we make in _those_ realities that made us what we were? Did those permutations make us turn out for the better? Or hell, did we already bite the dust out there long ago?” 

He did not have a reply to that. Sometimes Dell, with that brilliant, brilliant mind of his, would subconsciously drift a little too close to the precipice leading to thoughts way more overwhelming—and way bleaker—than he could handle, as he was doing now. And Dell, being _Dell_, would simply pretend to laugh it off with a shrug. 

_That’s what a bunch of abstract doctorates will do to ya,_ Dell would often say in jest, but rarely without—he noticed—a frown lingering on his face for several minutes after. 

He ought to take Dell’s mind off it for a while. 

“Hold up,” he said suddenly, turning to look at Dell proper and pointing a questioning finger at him. “You said one of them big words just now. Perma... permu-something-or-other.” 

“Ah, well, let's see—” Dell pushed away his hand as he rubbed his chin trying to find the right words. “Now, a permutation’s somethin’ like changin’ up the order of things in a group. Kinda like all the different moves you can make to win a game of chess, y’know? Or like mappin’ out our routes to the intel an’ back again.” 

“Or, what about... switching up how we leave base so we get the best possible line of attack?” He chewed on his lip, wondering if he’d interpreted the idea wrong. 

Dell punched him on the arm and whistled. “Not bad at all, Soldier-boy,” he teased. 

Now it was his turn to scowl as he tried to process Dell’s words again. “I am not stupid, Engie,” he said, crossing his arms in a half-hearted huff. “You were the one who came up with a fancy-pants word for something as simple as _‘all the different ways to kill a bunch of maggots’_.” 

“Now, now, it ain’t quite the same as jus’ ‘possibilities’, if that’s what you’re thinkin’,” Dell pointed out, stifling back a laugh at the sight of his grumpy face. He then pondered for a second or two before going on patiently: “It’s the _order_ we all leave the base in that matters most, f’instance. Different twists an’ turns down the flowchart leadin’ to that one outcome we’re all gunnin’ for. But you get the idea.” 

Too many times he had to remind himself, too, to tug Dell back from that beckoning abyss, and anchor him to the one reality that mattered. At least that part was easy—all he had to do was dangle a topic he knew Dell couldn’t resist jumping at. Semantics and schematics, for example. Or life’s simpler pleasures. 

“So, if we are talking about good outcomes, _professor,_” he said, a devious grin curling up his lips as he unfolded his arms to gesture at the sky, “is that in one of those other realities right now we are still here in this truck, kicking back with some nice cold beer because we’d _remembered_ to bring them?” 

In the darkness he could hear the same smile in Dell’s voice. It was working. “Well yeah, I s’pose.” 

“And barbecued ribs too?” 

“Goddammit Jane, stop givin’ me ideas. You know those rations earlier were jus’ hella _bad_.” 

“And even without the beer and ribs—whether or not all that multiverse crap even exists—you still think this _perm-mutation_ here is the best one there is, eh?” 

Dell burst out laughing, throwing his head back against the sacks again. The warm roundness of his voice echoed hollow into the deepening night, heard by no one but them both. He knew he did not have to share that wonderful laughter with anyone else, and something in his heart bloomed at that thought. 

“Would ya look at that,” said Dell, still chortling. “Someone’s thinkin’ pretty darned highly of himself now.” 

“Of course. This is the best me you’re ever going to get in _any_ dimension, Dell Conagher. Take it or leave it.” 

Dell’s smile was almost reaching to his ears. “I gotta be honest though,” he began, deftly sidestepping the reply expected from him. “I’d much prefer this reality if we jus’ had that dang beer to go with it. An’ a barbecue ain’t sound half bad, either.” 

“Yeah. Shame _we_ had forgotten to pack the booze when everyone and their mothers know our entire stash is right inside _your_ damned workshop.” He shifted himself a fraction closer to Dell, reaching a hand up along the fuzz on his arm to search for the back of his head, as he leaned into the side of Dell’s face. The roughness of his jaw made Dell snicker, and a smile crept into his own voice again. “And you bet your ass I’ll kick down that workshop door of yours if you ‘forget’ to bring it again next time.” 

“Damn you, Jane.” The sacks under their parka rustled, and he caught a surprise whiff of standard-issue soap as Dell moved closer and angled his head to look at him. The twinkle in his eyes was more wicked than the stars’ above, drawing him in a thousand times more than he was prepared for. 

“You know full well Tavish’s been hoardin’ his scrumpy somewhere too,” Dell murmured, his voice husky and mellow all at once. “Why dontcha raid his room for that too, huh?” 

Of course, he did not have a retort to that either. Not when he could already taste Dell’s smile right against his own, feel those firm, calloused hands teasing their way tender as ever between his back and undershirt, hear the tiniest hitch in Dell’s voice as he trailed softly down his open collar in return—and relish the growing warmth between them that not even the thickest of parkas could give. 

He would never forget how the night pieced itself together for him in those heady scents of coffee and soap, and the sensation of what he knew now was his favourite permutation rolling across his tongue. 

* * *

  


[5]

  


The rocket launcher slipped from his hand as he tried to hold on to Dell’s arms, but before he could do so Dell had broken off from him. Their breaths, warm and ragged from both fear and release, filled the meagre space between them as they stood together for several moments, Dell’s fistfuls of his uniform still lightly trembling. The bloodied wounds on his back and arms slowly knitted themselves closed in the dispenser’s comforting beam. 

He forced himself to keep his eyes shut. It was the only way to make this last. 

“... Jane.” 

For some reason Dell never did say his name often, and would only do so when the nights were quiet and the next nearest soul at least three walls—or thirty miles and a sky—away. It always made his heart swell whenever he heard that one, gentle syllable from Dell, but this time something seemed to stall inside him instead. 

He felt something graze over his lower lip: Dell’s thumb, rough and hesitant, then gone as quickly as it had come. 

“Go now,” Dell said quietly, withdrawing his other hand from his coat with a grim smile as he took a step back. The sunlight dancing in the green of his eyes seemed to betray his composure, and he tried to hide it with yet another careless wave of his now healed arm. “For us both. I’ll be jus’ fine. An’ you’ll be, too.” 

As if in response a flustered figure in white suddenly dashed in from behind the same corner round the shed, gasping, and halted at the sight before him. His glasses were askew, the flaps of his coat reduced to singed tatters, and his entire arm a rather horrific blend of blood and burnt flesh. In his other arm was a familiar glowing tube, still connected to his backpack by its hose. 

“Ludwig,” Dell called out, turning towards the doctor. His wrench was already back in hand, and goggles perched over his eyes. Back to his carefully constructed Engineer persona again. “Jesus, what... what’s goin’ on out there?” 

“Misha is dead,” Ludwig said, rather matter-of-factly, pausing to catch his breath next to the dispenser. “Tavish and Pyro... zey are holding up, but not for long, I’m afraid. Ze other team is down to zeir Medic, Heavy and Pyro now, and one or two more I could not see properly. But zeir Engineer and Soldier are definitely dead. Most likely zeir Demoman too.” 

Ludwig pushed his glasses back onto his nose—his face was streaked in tiny cuts from his broken lenses—and shot a reproving glance at the helmeted man before him. 

“I might not expect you to have a strategy on ze missus’s cruel last game for us, Herr Soldier,” he muttered to him, “but you could at least have been around vhere you vere needed.” 

He nodded, gritting his jaw as he adjusted his helmet. It was more crooked than he had imagined. “Sorry, Doc,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “I... was not prepared for this at all—no way was I going to barge up there without knowing what plans you and Engineer’ve got in mind. Especially not now with that Über you’ve got.” 

Ludwig gave a grumpy huff and raised his medigun. It was indeed glowing more brightly than usual, crackling with electricity and begging to be unleashed. The fact that he managed to last long enough in this death match to even build that Übercharge was testament to his wit and survival skills, and he was willing to wait for Ludwig’s decision on their next step. And by the looks of it Dell was too: he kept looking back and forth between the two of them, while fine-tuning the dispenser’s knobs to hasten its healing on Ludwig’s arm. 

“Zeir Medic has a Kritzkrieg,” Ludwig said finally. “If zey no longer have rockets or stickies zen he vill most likely use it on ze Heavy or Pyro.” He gestured at the rocket launcher still on the ground. “We vill stay out of zeir range and take down ze Heavy first.” 

He picked up his launcher and nodded again, bracing himself. “Right,” he said, his voice sounding unnaturally gruff. “Then let’s go.” On a whim he turned back to Dell who was leaning against the dispenser—whose eyes he knew were fixed on him as ever from behind those goggles—and saluted. 

“Thanks, Engie.” 

The corner of Dell’s lips twitched ever so slightly upwards at that salutation—one that was neither formal nor intimate, but still safe enough even if anyone else were to overhear—and gave him a two-finger salute and wave in return. 

“Go get ’em, Soldier-boy,” said Dell, his voice as blithe as his face. 

Ludwig grunted and looked down at his arm: it was almost completely healed now. He looked over to Dell too and peered at him. “I have faith in you, Herr Engineer,” he said earnestly. “Please support Demoman and Pyro however you can, and _try not to die._” 

He pointed at the wretched body of the enemy Spy with his chin, and added: “And I vould still vatch my back if I vere you. For all ve know zat _Schweinhund_ could still be alive.” 

Dell nodded. “Got it all covered, Doc.” He stole a quick glance at Jane. “We’ll walk out of this God-forsaken place by tomorrow,” he promised. 

* * *

  


[6]

  


As he left the relative safety of the sentry nest he found himself looking back more often than was wise—and not just because he wanted to make sure Ludwig was still behind him. They rounded the next corner, and Dell’s silhouette vanished together with his buildings’. 

His heart gave an involuntary clench, and he moved on ever forward, boots crunching on increasingly blood-soaked grit and shrapnel. 

“In five, Herr Soldier,” he heard Ludwig’s fierce whisper right behind him. 

The screams of whizzing bullets and metal against metal were deafening now. Just before the last turn that would bring him face to face with the battle he saw, like film on the dark canvas that was the underside of his helmet, flashes of light and shadow before his eyes. Flashes playing out what was, what could be, what he did not want to see. 

_Jeremy—his broken body and bat hurled against the base of a wire fence, the tears of the boy he still was fringing his eyelids, and his hand still clutched at the dogtags around his neck._

_Tavish—his protective vest ripped to shreds by bullets, his lone eye ruptured in a crimson fountain over his face, and mouth agape at the merciless open sky under which his mother still waited._

_Ludwig—airblasted out of range mid-charge, then pierced with flare after flare meeting its mark, as he fell an inhuman height right into gravity’s embrace._

_Mikhail—a fallen mountain scattered with the wilted bullet blossoms from his bandolier, laid to waste with a single shot between his eyes, and a wide-eyed guilt at the danger he had exposed Ludwig to._

And Dell... 

_A silence hanging thick over the back of the shed, punctuated by nothing but roiling smoke and the feeble fizzes of electricity—_

_—The sentry’s wreckage, sparking and tangled in the wiry remains of a sapper, its barrels and legs torn apart in a shower of broken bolts and bullets, and still emitting its last death throes in tinny, mechanical wails—_

_—The dispenser’s empty husk lying on its side, munition and metal reserves blasted to smithereens, its once comforting glow fading into perpetual cold, and the final clank from its heart heavy with apologies of letting the team down, for the very last time—_

_—Dell, his crumpled form lost under all the metal and debris, shattered goggles giving way to green eyes that still glistened in mid-cry as they tried to stare death down in the face. A perfectly round gunshot wound piercing through his hardhat and forehead—gone, then replaced by a butterfly knife buried to the hilt right through his spine. Then a hundred bullet holes through his body, spilling blood like the tears he had only openly shed once, when Jane had made his leap of faith and he had said _yes_—_

_—Then even that was no more, as an inferno of smoke and fire suddenly engulfed Dell’s body, and reduced him to ashes._

_Dell,_ he screamed, and ran headlong into the fray. His world burst into a bright metallic light as a familiar charge raged through his entire body, and he let his instincts take over. 

Somewhere, somehow, he would find the one permutation that would end with him and Dell leaving this war alive, together. 

_We’ll walk out of this God-forsaken place by tomorrow._

  


_-fin-_

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a sorta-PWP, one-paragraph (guess which one) OTP drabble, which then expanded into an entire story in the span of five days, and unexpectedly became my very first finished TF2 fanfic. I hope it's decent enough and that you guys enjoy the result, despite the many heart-wrenching moments I'd ended up adding to it.
> 
> With special, special thanks to the many TF2 fan communities over the years for their wealth of creativity, ideas and sheer talent. Danke for being such an inspiration, all of you.
> 
> \- tb
> 
> // PS: I have a deep-seated bias against epithets, so I apologise if some of the character pronouns aren't exactly the clearest.  
// PPS: Cover art <del>in progress</del> completed: [[ X ]](https://tangentburd.tumblr.com/post/186889439059/permutations)
> 
> // 19/8/6: Edited minor details across the whole story for better flow, mostly at the flashback.  
// 19/8/27: Toned down Engie's accent because it's getting distracting.  
// 20/4/9: Updated summary. Previous summary was the second last paragraph in this fic.


End file.
